A Daughter of the Forest

“Yes. It does,” answered Adrian, reverently. Surely, Pierre was a changed and better lad.

Then his eyes rested on the wooden dinner-pot, and to his astonishment it was not burning but hung steadily in its place and the water in it was already beginning to simmer. Above the water line the bark shrivelled and scorched slightly, but Pierre looked out for this and with a scoop made from a leaf replenished the water as it steamed away. The beans, too, were swelling and gave every promise of cooking – in due course of time. Meanwhile, the cook rolled himself over and about in the warmth of the fire till his clothes were dry and all the cold had left his body. Also, he had observed Adrian’s surprise with a pardonable pride.

“Lose an Indian in the woods and he’s as rich as a lord. It’s the Indian in me coming out now.”

“It’s an extra sense. Divination, instinct, something better than education.”

“What the master calls ‘woodcraft.’ Yes. Wonder how he is, and all of them. Say. What do you think I thought about when I was whirling round that pool, before I didn’t think of anything?”

“Your sins, I suppose. That’s what I’ve heard comes to a drowning man.”

“Shucks! Saw the mére’s face when she broke that glass! Fact. Though I wasn’t there at the time. And one thing more: saw that ridiculous Xanthippé, looking like she’d never done a thing but warble. Oh! my! How I do wish Margot’d sell her.”

“Shall I help you get birch for the canoe now? I begin to believe you can do even that, you are so clever.”

This praise was sweet to Pierre’s vain ears and had the result which Adrian desired, of diverting the talk from their island friends. In their present situation, hopeful as the other pretended to find it, he felt it best for his own peace of mind not to recall loved and absent faces.

They went to work with a will, and will it was that helped them; else with the poor tools at hand they had never accomplished their undertaking. Indeed, it was a labor of considerable time. Not only was that first meal of boiled beans cooked and eaten, but several more of the same sort followed. To vary these, Pierre baked some, in the same method as he had boiled them, or else in the ashes of their fire. He even fashioned a sort of hook from a coat button and with cedar roots for a line, caught a fish now and then. But they craved the seasoning of salt, and even the dessert of blue-berries which nature provided them could not satisfy this longing, which grew almost intolerable to Adrian’s civilized palate.

“Queer, isn’t it? When I was at that lumber camp I nearly died because all the meat, or nearly all, was so salt. Got so I couldn’t eat anything, hardly. Now, just because I haven’t salt I can’t eat, either.”

“Indians not that way. Indians eat one thing same’s another. Indian just wants to live, don’t care about the rest. Indian never eats too much. I’m all Indian now.”

Adrian opened his eyes to their widest, then threw himself back and laughed till the tears came.

“Pierre, Pierre! Would you had been ‘all Indian’ when you tackled Angelique’s fried chicken! Umm! I can taste it now!”

But at length the new canoe was ready. They had put as few ribs into it as would suffice to hold it in shape and Pierre had carefully sewn it with the roots of the black cedar, which serves the woodsman for so many purposes, where thread or twine is needed. They had made a paddle and a pole as well as they could with their knives, and having nothing to pack except themselves and their small remnant of beans, made their last camp-fire at that spot and lay down to sleep.

But the dreams of both were troubled; and in the night Adrian rose and went to add wood to the fire. It had died down to coals, but his attention was caught by a ring of white light upon the ashes, wholly distinct from the red embers.

“What’s that?”

In a moment he had answered his own question. It was the phosphorescent glow from the inner bark of a half burned log, and further away he saw another portion of the same log making a ghostly radiance on the surrounding ground.

“Oh! I wouldn’t have missed that for anything. Mr. Dutton told me of beautiful sights he had witnessed and of the strange will-o’-the-wisps that abound in the forest. I’ll gather some of the chips.”

He did so, and they made a fairy-like radiance over his palm; but while he was intently studying them, he felt his hand rudely knocked up, so that the bits of wood flew out of it.

“Pierre! Stop that!”

“Don’t you know what that is? A warning – a sign – an omen. Oh! if I had never come upon this trip!”

“You foolish fellow. Just as I thought you were beginning to get sense. Nothing in the world but decayed bark and chemical – ”

Pierre stopped his ears.

“I was dreaming of the mére. She came with her apron to her eyes and her clothes in tatters. She was scolding – ”

“Perfectly natural.”

“And begging me – ”

“Not to eat so many half-baked beans for supper.”

“There’s something wrong at the island. I saw the cabin all dark. I saw Margot’s eyes red with weeping.”

“No doubt Tom has been into fresh mischief and your mother has punished him.”

Pierre ignored these flippant interruptions, but rehearsed his dismal visions till Adrian lost patience and pushed him aside.

“Go. Bring an armful of fresh wood; some that isn’t phosphorescent, if you prefer. That’ll wake you up and drive the megrims out of your mind.”

“’Tis neither of them things. ’Tis a warning. They were all painted with black, and all the Hollow creatures were painted, too. ’Tis a warning. I shall see death before I am – ”

Even while he maundered on in this strain he was unconsciously obeying the command to fetch wood, and moved toward a pile left ready. Now, in raking this together, Adrian had, also, swept that spot of ground clean and exposed; and what neither had observed in the twilight was plainly revealed by the glow and shadows cast by the fire.

This was a low, carefully made mound that, in shape and significance, could be confounded with no other sort of mound, wherever met. Both recognized it at once, and even upon Adrian the shock was painful; but its effect upon superstitious Pierre was far greater. With a shriek that startled the silence of the forest he flung himself headlong.

CHAPTER XVI

DIVERGING ROADS

“Get up, Pierre. You should be ashamed of yourself!”

It needed a strong and firm grasp to force the terrified lad to his feet and even when he, at last, stood up he shivered like an aspen.

“A grave!”

“Certainly. A grave. But neither yours nor mine. Only that of some poor fellow who has died in the wilderness. I’m sorry I piled the brush upon it, yet glad we discovered it in the end.”

“Gla-a-ad!” gasped the other.

“Yes. Of course. I mean to cover it with fresh sods and plant some of those purple orchids at its head. I’ll cut a cedar headstone, too, and mark it so that nobody else shall desecrate it as we have done.”

“You mustn’t touch it! It’s nobody’s – only a warning.”

“A warning, surely; that we must take great care lest a like fate come on us; but somebody lies under that mound and I pity him. Most probable that he lost his life in that very whirlpool which wrecked us. Twice I’ve been upset and lost all my belongings, but escaped safe. I hope I’ll not run the same chance again. Come. Lie down again, and go to sleep.”

“Couldn’t sleep; to try in such a haunted place would be to be ‘spelled’ – ”

“Pierre Ricord! For a fellow that’s so smart at some things you are the biggest dunce I know, in others. Haven’t we slept like lords ever since we struck this camp? I’m going to make my bed up again and turn in. I advise you to do the same.”

Adrian tossed the branches aside, then rearranged them, lapping the soft ends over the hard ones in an orderly row which would have pleased a housewife. Thus freshened his odorous mattress was as good as new, and stretching himself upon it he went to sleep immediately.

Pierre fully intended to keep awake; but fatigue and loneliness prevailed, and five minutes later he had crept close to Adrian’s side.

The sunshine on his face, and the sound of a knife cutting wood awoke him; and there was Adrian whittling away at a broad slab of cedar, smiling and jeering, and in the best of spirits, despite his rather solemn occupation.

“For a fellow who wouldn’t sleep, you’ve done pretty well. See. I’ve caught a fish and set it cooking. I’ve picked a pile of berries, and have nearly finished this headstone. Added another accomplishment to my many – monument maker. But I’m wrong to laugh over that, though the poor unknown to whom it belongs would be grateful to me, I’ve no doubt. Lend a hand, will you?”

But nothing would induce Pierre to engage in any such business. Nor would he touch his breakfast while Adrian’s knife was busy. He sat apart, looking anywhere rather than toward his mate, and talking over his shoulder to him in a strangely subdued voice.

“Adrian!”

“Well?”

“Most done?”

“Nearly.”

“What you going to put on it?”

“I’ve been wondering. Think this: ‘To the Memory of My Unknown Brother.’”

“Wh-a-a-t!”

Adrian repeated the inscription.

“He was no kin to you.”

“We are all kin. It’s all one world, God’s world. All the people and all these forests, and the creatures in them – I tell you I’ve never heard a sermon that touched me as the sight of this grave in the wilderness has touched me. I mean to be a better, kinder man, because of it. Margot was right, none of us has a right to his own self. She told me often that I should go home to my own folks and make everything right with them; then, if I could, come back and live in the woods, somewhere. ‘If I felt I must.’ But I don’t feel that way now. I want to get back and go to work. I want to live so that when I die – like that poor chap, yonder, – somebody will have been the better for my life. Pshaw! Why do I talk to you like this? Anyway, I’ll set this slab in place, and then – ”

Pierre rose and still without looking Adrian’s way, pushed the new canoe into the water. He had carefully pitched it, on the day before, with a mixture of the old pork grease and gum from the trees, so that there need be no delay at starting.

Adrian finished his work, lettered the slab with a coal from the fire, and re-watered the wild flowers he had already planted.

“Aren’t you going to eat breakfast first?”

“Not in a graveyard,” answered Pierre, with a solemnity that checked Adrian’s desire to smile.

A last reverent attention, a final clearing of all rubbish from the spot, and he, too, stepped into the canoe and picked up his paddle. They had passed the rapids and reached a smooth stretch of the river, where they had camped, and now pulled steadily and easily away, once more upon their journey south. But not till they had put a considerable distance between themselves and that woodland grave, would Pierre consent to stop and eat the food that Adrian had prepared. Even then, he restricted the amount to be consumed, remarking with doleful conviction:

“We’re going to be starved before we reach Donovan’s. The ‘food stick’ burnt off and dropped into the fire, last night.”

Adrian remembered that his mate had spoken of it at the time, when by some carelessness, they had not secured the crotched sapling on which they hung their birch kettle.

“Oh! you simple thing. Why will you go through life tormenting yourself with such nonsense? Come. Eat your breakfast. We’re going straight to Donovan’s as fast as we can. I’ve done with the woods for a time. So should you be done. You’re needed at the island. Not because of any dreams but because the more I recall of Mr. Dutton’s appearance the surer I am that he is a sick man. You’ll go back, won’t you?”

“Yes. I’m going back. Not because you ask me, though.”

“I don’t care why – only go.”

“I’m not going into the show business.”

Adrian smiled. “Of course you’re not. You’ll never have money enough. It would cost lots.”

“’Tisn’t that. ’Twas the dream. That was sent me. All them animals in black paint, and the blue herons without any heads, and – My mother came for me, last night.”

“I heartily wish you could go to her this minute! She’s superstitious enough, in all conscience, yet she has the happy faculty of keeping her lugubrious son in subjection.”

Whenever Pierre became particularly depressing the other would rattle off as many of the longest words as occurred to him. They had the effect of diverting his comrade’s thoughts.

Then they pulled on again, nor did anything disastrous happen to further hinder their progress. The food did not give out, for they lived mostly upon berries, having neither time nor desire to stop and cook their remnant of beans. When they were especially tired Pierre lighted a fire and made a bucket of hemlock tea, but Adrian found cold water preferable to this decoction; and, in fact, they were much nearer Donovan’s, that first settlement in the wilderness, than even Pierre had suspected.

Their last portage was made – an easy one, there being nothing but themselves and the canoe to carry – and they came to a big dead water where they had looked to find another running stream; but had no sooner sighted it than their ears were greeted by the laughter of loons, which threw up their legs and dived beneath the surface in that absurd manner which Adrian always found amusing.

“Bad luck, again!” cried Pierre, instantly, “never hear a loon but – ”

“But you see a house! Look, look! Donovan’s, or somebody’s, no matter whose! A house, a house!”

There, indeed, it lay; a goodly farmstead, with its substantial cabins, its outbuildings, its groups of cattle on the cleared land, and – yes, yes, its moving human beings, and what seemed oddest still, its teams of horses.

Even Pierre was silent, and tears sprang to the eyes of both lads as they gazed. Until that moment neither had fully realized how lonely and desolate had been their situation.

“Now for it! It’s a biggish lake and we’re pretty tired! But that means rest, plenty to eat, people – everything.”

Their rudely built canoe was almost useless when they beached it at last on Donovan’s wharf, and their own strength was spent. But it was a hospitable household to which they had come, and one quite used to welcoming wanderers from the forest. They were fed and clothed and bedded, without question, but, when a long sleep had set them both right, tongues wagged and plans were settled with amazing promptness.

For there were other guests at the farm; a party of prospectors, going north into the woods to locate timber for the next season’s cutting. These would be glad of Pierre’s company and help, and would pay him “the going wages.” But they would not return by the route he had come, though by leaving theirs at a point well north, he could easily make his way back to the island.

“So you shot the poor moose for nothing. You cannot even have his horns!” said Adrian reproachfully. “Well, as soon as I can vote, I mean to use all my influence to stop this murder in the forest.”

The strangers smiled and shrugged their shoulders. “We’re after game ourselves, as well as timber, but legislation is already in progress to stop the indiscriminate slaughter of the fast disappearing moose and caribou. Five hundred dollars is the fine to be imposed for any infringement of the law, once passed.”

Pierre’s jaw dropped. He was so impressed by the long words and the mention of that, to him, enormous sum, that he was rendered speechless for a longer time than Adrian ever remembered. But, if he said nothing, he reflected sadly upon the magnificent antlers he should see no more.

Adrian’s affairs were also, speedily and satisfactorily arranged. Farmer Donovan would willingly take him to the nearest stage route; thence to a railway would be easy journeying; and by steam he could travel swiftly, indeed, to that distant home which he now so longed to see.

The parting of the lads was brief, but not without emotion. Two people cannot go through their experiences and dangers, to remain indifferent to each other. In both their hearts was now the kindliest feeling and the sincere hope that they should meet again. Pierre departed first and looked back many times at the tall, graceful figure of his comrade; then the trees intervened and the forest had again swallowed him into its familiar depths.

Then Adrian, also, stepped upon the waiting buck-board and was driven over the rough road in the opposite direction.

Three days later, with nothing in his pocket but his treasured knife, a roll of birch-bark, and the ten-dollar piece which, through all his adventures, he had worn pinned to his inner clothing, “a make-piece offering” to his mother he reached the brown stone steps to his father’s city mansion.

There, for the first time, he hesitated. All the bitterness with which he had descended those steps, banished in disgrace, was keenly remembered.

“Can I, shall I, dare I go up and ring that bell?”

A vision floated before him. Margot’s earnest face and tear-dimmed eyes. Her lips speaking:

“If I had father or mother anywhere – nothing should ever make me leave them. I would bear everything – but I would be true to them.”

An instant later a peal rang through that silent house, such as it had not echoed in many a day. What would be the answer to it?

CHAPTER XVII

IN THE HOUR OF DARKNESS

“No sign yet?”

“No sign.” Margot’s tone was almost hopeless. Day after day, many times each day, she had climbed the pine-tree flagstaff and peered into the distance. Not once had anything been visible, save that wide stretch of forest and the shining lake.

“Suppose you cross again, to old Joe’s. He might be back by this time. I’ll fix you a bite of dinner, and you better. Maybe – ”

The girl shook her head and clasped her arms about old Angelique’s neck. Then the long repressed grief burst forth in dry sobs that shook them both, and pierced the housekeeper’s faithful heart with a pain beyond endurance.

“Pst! Pouf! Hush, sweetheart, hush! ’Tis nought. A few days more and the master will be well. A few days more and Pierre will come – Ah! but I had my hands about his ears this minute! That would teach him, yes, to turn his back on duty, him. The ingrate! Well, what the Lord sends the body must bear.”

Margot lifted her head, shook back her hair, and smiled wanly. The veriest ghost of her old smile, it was, yet even such a delight to the other’s eyes.

“Good. That’s right. Rouse up. There’s a wing of a fowl in the cupboard, left from the master’s broth – ”

“Angelique, he didn’t touch it, to-day. Not even touch it.”

“’Tis nought. When the fever is on the appetite is gone. Will be all right once that is over.”

“But, will it ever be over? Day after day, just the same. Always that tossing to and fro, the queer, jumbled talk, the growing thinner – all of the dreadful signs of how he suffers. Angelique, if I could bear it for him! I am so young and strong and worth nothing to this world while he’s so wise and good. Everybody who ever knew him must be the better for Uncle Hughie.”

“’Tis truth. For that, the good Lord will spare him to us. Of that be sure.”

“But I pray and pray and pray, and there comes no answer. He is never any better. You know that. You can’t deny it. Always before when I have prayed the answer has come swift and sure, but now – ”

“Take care, Margot. ’Tis not for us to judge the Lord’s strange ways. Else were not you and me and the master shut up alone on this island, with no doctor near, and only our two selves to keep the dumb things in comfort, though, as for dumbness, hark yonder beast!”

“Reynard! Oh! I forgot. I shut him up because he would hang about the house and watch your poor chickens. If he’d stay in his own forest now, I would be so glad. Yet I love him – ”

“Aye, and he loves you. Be thankful. Even a beastie’s love is of God’s sending. Go feed him. Here. The wing you’ll not eat yourself.”

There were dark days now on the once sunny island of peace.

That day when Mr. Dutton had said: “Your father is still alive,” seemed now to Margot, looking back, as one of such experiences as change a whole life. Up till that morning she had been a thoughtless, unreflecting child, but the utterance of those fateful words altered everything.

Amazement, unbelief of what her ears told her, indignation that she had been so long deceived – as she put it – were swiftly followed by a dreadful fear. Even while he spoke, the woodlander’s figure swayed and trembled, the hoe-handle on which he rested wavered and fell, and he, too, would have fallen had not the girl’s arms caught and eased his sudden sinking in the furrow he had worked. Her shrill cry of alarm had reached Angelique, always alert for trouble and then more than ever, and had brought her swiftly to the field. Between them they had carried the now unconscious man within and laid him on his bed. He had never risen from it since; nor, in her heart, did Angelique believe he ever would, though she so stoutly asserted to the contrary before Margot.

“We have changed places, Angelique, dear,” the child often said. “It used to be you who was always croaking and looking for trouble. Now you see only brightness.”

“Well, good sooth. ’Tis a long lane has no turnin’, and better late nor never. Sometimes ’tis well to say ‘stay good trouble lest worser comes,’ eh? But things’ll mend. They must. Now, run and climb the tree. It might be this ver’ minute that wretch, Pierre, was on his way across the lake. Pouf! But he’ll stir his lazy bones, once he touches this shore! Yes, yes, indeed. Run and hail him, maybe.”

So Margot had gone, again and again, and had returned to sit beside her uncle’s bed, anxious and watchful.

Often, also, she had paddled across the narrows and made her way swiftly to a little clearing on her uncle’s land, where, among giant trees, old Joseph Wills, the Indian guide and faithful friend of all on Peace Island, made one of his homes. Once Mr. Dutton had nursed this red man through a dangerous illness, and had kept him in his own home for many weeks thereafter. He would have been the very nurse they now needed, in their turn, could he have been found. But his cabin was closed, and on its doorway, under the family sign-picture of a turtle on a rock, he had printed in dialect, what signified his departure for a long hunting trip.

Now, as Angelique advised, she resolved to try once more; and hurrying to the shore, pushed her canoe into the water and paddled swiftly away. She had taken the neglected Reynard with her and Tom had invited himself to be a party of the trip; and in the odd but sympathetic companionship, Margot’s spirits rose again.

“It must be as Angelique says. The long lane will turn. Why have I been so easily discouraged? I never saw my precious uncle ill before, and that is why I have been so frightened. I suppose anybody gets thin and says things, when there is fever. But he’s troubled about something. He wants to do something that neither of us understand. Unless – Oh! I believe I do understand! My head is clearer out here on the water, and I know, I know! it is just about the time of year when he goes away on those long trips of his. And we’ve been so anxious we never remembered. That’s it. That surely is it. Then, of course, Joe will be back now or soon. He always stays on the island when uncle goes and he’ll remember. Oh! I’m brighter already, and I guess, I believe, it is as Angelique claims – God won’t take away so good a man as uncle and leave me alone. Though – I am not alone! I have a father! I have a father, somewhere, if I only knew – all in good time – and I’m growing gladder and gladder every minute.”

She could even sing to the stroke of her paddle and she skimmed the water with increasing speed. Whatever the reason for her growing cheerfulness, whether the reaction of youth or a prescience of happiness to come, the result was the same; she reached the further shore flushed and eager eyed, more like the old Margot than she had been for many days.

“Oh! he’s there. He is at home. There is a smoke coming out the chimney. Joseph! Oh! Joseph, Joseph!”

She did not even stop to take care of her canoe but left it to float whither it would. Nothing mattered, Joseph was at home. He had canoes galore, and he was help indeed.

She was quite right. The old man came to his doorway and waited her arrival with apparent indifference, though surely no human heart could have been unmoved by such unfeigned delight. Catching his unresponsive hands in hers she cried: